Salmon Pasta

When you're tired of meat-based pasta dishes, salmon is a good, quick, healthy alternative. I knew I had a pack of unopened smoked salmon in the fridge so I popped into M&S on my way home from the dentist (can't eat anything at the moment which needs significant chewing due to brace work and fact that my molars currently don't meet) and got thinking about what would work well with it. I usually just add lemon and capers but the girls aren't so fond of the little green salty things, so I thought I'd come up with an alternative. This is what I bought:-

Flaked salmon (mild smoke)

Fresh peas

Leeks

Watercress sauce

The ingredients I already had in the fridge and larder were:-

Unwaxed lemon

100g smoked salmon

Head of chicory

Pink peppercorns

Lemon olive oil

So all I had to do was trim and slice a medium-sized leek and soften it up in a pan with about a tablespoon of the lemon infused olive oil:

Then I chopped the smoked salmon and added it to the softened leeks with a good teaspoon of crushed pink peppercorns:-

Then I opened the packet of flaked salmon and added that together with the the sliced chicory and 100g of fresh peas:-

Then came the grated zest of one unwaxed lemon (you won't die if you use a waxed one!), together with a teaspoon of lemon juice and the 150g packet of watercress sauce:-

And that was it! I added no wine, no salt. 

I'd boiled salted water at the start of this and while the sauce was melding its flavours, I added the pasta (use a fancy type if you want to big it up a bit) to the pan of boiling water. I used a posh one I'd found in M&S which was authentically Italian with no cooking time instructions and evocative black and white photos of the farmers harvesting the wheat and the bloke who makes the pasta and the place where it's made - with authentically expensive price tag attached! 

While the pasta cooked I awarded myself a nice glass of good New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, courtesy of Majestic Wines - one which the tasting notes said would go perfectly with seafood: minerally like a Sancerre rather than overly sweet and zesty.

Always cook pasta in large amounts of water so that the starch that is released in the cooking process does not coat the pasta unduly and make it go clumpy and sticky. Another tip for reducing this problem is to put the pan under the cold tap once cooked: the cold water added to the pan makes the starch coagulate in the water rather than stick to the pasta when drained. 

The final touch was to drizzle a good tablespoon of the lemon olive oil over the drained pasta before serving.

Buon Appetito!